Episode 875

On this edition of FanGraphs Audio, I welcome senior writer Dan Szymborski back to the program. Dan and I discuss his favorite free agent signings of the offseason so far, the teams that have most altered their 2020 fortunes, and what a busy winter means for the overall health of free agency. I also force Dan to assign the remaining good free agents to new homes, lightening round style.

You can find all of Dan’s 2020 ZiPS projections here as they roll out.

Our RosterResource Free Agent tracker can be found here, and the Offseason Transaction Tracker can be found here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 53 min play time.)

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Veteran southpaw Wade Miley recently signed a two-year deal with the pitching-minded Cincinnati Reds. Last year with the Houston Astros, Miley posted his highest WAR since 2015, which should come as little surprise since he was under the guidance of one of the best pitching coaches in baseball, Brent Strom, though he ended the year on a sour note. While he’s likely in the twilight of his career, the 33-year-old will once again be working with another elite pitching coach, Derek Johnson. What kind of production might the Reds see from Miley in 2020? While I’m sure the folks in Great American Ballpark have their ideas, I see a basic change to his favored pitch, the cutter, which could help Miley in the long run.

Miley generally works with four pitches: a backspin cutter (his main pitch), a circle change, a four-seamer, and a lightly used curveball.

Notice anything in the above GIF? A quick inspection of the arm-slot pause shows a decent amount of release point variation between Miley’s cutter (and, to a lesser extent, his four-seamer) compared to his changeup and curve. Since Miley’s cutter usage is on the rise, we’ll focus on that pitch and, for the sake of argument, ignore the four-seamer; that version of his fastball has been on a steady decline, though there was a slight uptick in its use last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about whether this year’s good free agents have actually gone to an unusual selection of teams and whether they believe in Wade Miley’s supposed pitch-tipping, and then, in the third and final installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 more teams in 2019, touching on the Mariners’ many players (especially Kyle Lewis), the .300-hitting Hanser Alberto, Danny Santana’s resurgence, the joy of Ji-Man Choi, career years for Eduardo Rodriguez and Christian Vázquez, Ian Kennedy as a relief ace and Danny Duffy’s experience with anxiety and depression, Spencer Turnbull’s record and the conversion of Nick Ramirez, Mitch Garver and Luis Arraez, Eloy Jiménez’s vengeance, the Yankees’ home series and CC Sabathia as Yoda, and other players, fun facts, and statistical oddities that deserve longer looks.

Audio intro: Earlimart, "Nothing is True"
Audio outro: The Smiths, "Hand in Glove"

Link to Ben Clemens on free agents
Link to Rosenthal on Miley’s pitch-tipping
Link to Lookout Landing on Lewis
Link to Ben Clemens on the joy of Choi
Link to Duffy story
Link to story on Garver’s makeover
Link to Arraez origin story
Link to story on Arraez plate appearance
Link to story on Sabathi-Yoda
Link to story on Pedro-da
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Managers and front office executives have media obligations at the Winter Meetings, and here at FanGraphs we do our best to engage in, and report on, as any those sessions as possible. Today we’ll share some of what I learned in San Diego, with the five American League Central teams front and center.

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How do trade talks typically work at the Winter Meetings? Twins President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey touched on that subject as things were winding down in San Diego.

“A lot of it is continuation of previous conversations,” Falvey told a small group of reporters. “End of season, everyone kind of takes a breath and looks at what’s going on. Then you have the GM meetings and start a lot of the conversations. This is just an extension of that. In many ways, we sit in our suites and text, and call, other teams. We’re not necessarily even walking down the hall, or going to another floor.”

The Twins aren’t unique in that respect. I subsequently overheard an executive from a National League team saying he’s not sure if anyone came to their suite all week.

As for the level of non-face-to-face exchanges, some clubs were more engaged than others. The AL Central champs fit into the “less” category, their attention directed more toward non-trade acquisitions.

“Last year was a little bit slower Winter Meetings,” Falvey said of expectations going in. “Could it be slower again? We weren’t sure. If anything, this gave us some more clarity around what our next few weeks will look like. We’ve already assessed the players. I’ll say this: The conversations with teams seemed a little less frequent than the free agent conversations.” Read the rest of this entry »

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Johan Santana, Roy Oswalt, and many a great pitcher before them, Cliff Lee burned brightly but briefly. Though he lacked a high-velocity fastball, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound lefty — “lean like a knife blade, with a club fighter’s big jaw,” as Pat Jordan described him in 2011 — had a deceptive delivery and precision command of a broad arsenal of weapons. His mid-career addition of a cut fastball, inspired by — who else? — Mariano Rivera turned him from an innings-eater into an ace.

From 2008-13, Lee was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. His 36.8 WAR over that span was nearly four full wins ahead of the second-ranked Clayton Kershaw, who to be fair was a late-May call-up at the start of that stretch (by fWAR, Lee had a 1.5-WAR lead over second-ranked Justin Verlander). Over that six-year span, Lee had the majors’ second-lowest ERA (2.89), the lowest FIP (2.85) and walk rate (1.33 per nine), and the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio of any pitcher with at least 600 innings. During that time, which began when Lee was 29 and fresh off the sting of having spent a good chunk of the previous season in Triple-A while his teammates came within one win of the AL pennant, he won a Cy Young award, pitched for two World Series teams, was traded three times, made four All-Star teams, and signed the third-richest deal for a pitcher to that point.

Lee threw 1,333.2 innings in that span, the fifth-highest total in baseball. Unfortunately, his elbow could only handle so much. A flexor pronator strain limited him to 13 starts in 2014, his age-35 season, and aside from a single spring training outing in 2015, he never pitched in a game again. As I noted in the context of Oswalt’s Hall of Fame case last year, Lee’s total of 2156.2 innings is fewer than all but one enshrined starter — not Sandy Koufax but Dizzy Dean. While not truly a viable candidate for Cooperstown, he nonetheless merits a full-length entry in this series.

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